Have you ever seen 201 award winning extra virgin olive oils in one room? If you were at the Athena International Olive Oil Competition’s tasting day and awards ceremony at the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens in April, you not only saw them but tasted any that struck your fancy. Like Anita Zachou, you had a chance to experience “an explosion of the senses!”

This is the revised edition of a list that should grow very long but still has a great deal of room to grow—and additions are welcome. It focuses on where to buy bottled and branded 100% Greek extra virgin olive oils (EVOOs), since these are high quality, healthy olive oils that have their flavor sealed into bottles where oxygen cannot harm its quality.

Welcome to Greek Liquid Gold: Authentic Extra Virgin Olive Oil! This independent, unofficially non-profit website is designed to provide more up-to-date information about Greek extra virgin olive oil than English speakers have ever found on one site. Here, you will learn why many Greeks borrow a phrase from the epic poet Homer, “liquid gold,” to describe the precious juice of the olive fruit.

Competing with 242 samples from ten countries, Greek olive oils earned 25 awards from an international jury at the Japan Olive Oil Prize (JOOP) competition for 2019: 5 Best in Class quality awards, a Best Package award, 11 Gold Awards, and 8 silvers. Several of the top Greek winners discussed the efforts, emotions, olives, and methods behind their success.

Competing with 364 samples from 14 countries, Greek olive oils won 65 medals and several special awards at the 4th edition of the Athena International Olive Oil Competition. Judged by 20 tasters from a dozen nations at the first parliament building of modern Greece in Nafplio, the top Greek winners told Greek Liquid Gold about their commitment to quality.

The Greek olive harvest began in September, but November is traditionally the busiest month for the thousands of olive farmers and olive mills that produce Greek olive oil. Many dedicated Greeks are learning the techniques needed to make some of the world’s best extra virgin olive oils. But how can consumers tell if they are buying extra virgin olive oil?

How should I use olive oil? Greeks don’t need to ask, since they consume more of this liquid gold per capita than anyone else in the world. To help those outside the major olive growing regions, Greek Liquid Gold asked Greek olive oil producers and company representatives, plus two prominent European chefs, about their favorite ways to eat olive oil.

Competing with 701 samples from 24 countries at Olive Japan, Greek olive oils won 3 Gold Medals and 28 Silvers. Some of the top Greek winners shared their reactions and priorities, as well as the techniques that helped produce a variety of excellent extra virgin olive oils in a year when many producers struggled with adverse weather and the olive fly.

On International Women’s Day, Greek Liquid Gold is honoring the contributions of the women working in the olive oil world. In Greece, thousands of women care for olive trees, harvest olives, work in mills and bottling plants, and market, sell, export, taste, and judge Greek olive oil. Here are a few whose achievements have attracted international attention.

For the fourth year, the Filaios Friends of Olive Oil Society sponsored the Greek national Kotinos Olive Oil Competition. At the Food Expo in Athens, awards were presented to Greek extra virgin olive oils made from 14 different olive varieties in many parts of the country, highlighting producers’ ability to excel even in a difficult harvest year.

What do a Greek-Canadian graduate of the political science department at McGill University in Montreal and a Greek translator who studied in Corfu and worked in Athens have in common? Olive oil. Both of these educated young women decided to return to the Greek island of Crete where they grew up and dedicate themselves to their family’s olive oil businesses.

At the 20th Los Angeles International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition this year, Greek extra virgin olive oils captured 23 quality awards and 14 design awards. After competing with 530 olive oils from 302 producers from 17 countries, some of the top Greek winners discussed the ways they overcame adversity to excel in this very difficult harvest year.

Following in the footsteps of their foremothers while learning about the latest innovations and aiming for the highest quality, a new generation of well educated, enthusiastic Greek women is sharing their family’s high quality extra virgin olive oil with the world. The efforts of Greek women of all ages are inspiring others in the olive oil sector.

At the 5th Cretan Olive Oil Competition awards ceremony in Rethymno on March 24, regional dignitaries and Greek and international olive oil judges joined a packed house of Cretan olive oil producers. They discussed the state of the Cretan olive oil sector and celebrated excellent Greek extra virgin olive oils produced in this challenging harvest year.

Since January 1, a new law in Greece has mandated that the olive oil on restaurant tables be served in sealed, non-refillable or disposable, properly labeled bottles instead of the refillable glass containers commonly used in the past. Greek olive oil industry experts hail this change as beneficial for both consumers and the Greek olive oil world.

Greece typically produces the third largest amount of olive oil in the world, after Spain and Italy—around 300,000 metric tons per year. Greeks consume more olive oil per capita than anyone else in the world—almost 13 kilograms annually in 2013-14 according to the International Olive Council (IOC), and even more in certain regions.

Olives enter the olive receiving area on conveyor belts for separation from leaves and branches and then enter the mill. They may be washed either outside or inside the mill. In both traditional and modern mills, olives are ground or crushed into a paste which is pressed or churned to release oil that must then be separated from other liquids and solids.

Olive oil is good for us--so good that it is considered both a healthy food and a delicious medicine! There are so many articles about the scientific evidence for the health benefits of extra virgin olive oil that it’s hard to keep track of them. Here is an overview, followed by links to the best, clearest, most useful recent articles I’ve read.

When you think of olive oil, do you think of Italy and Spain? Did you know Greece produces the third largest quantity of olive oil on earth and the largest proportion of extra virgin, while consuming by far the most olive oil per capita? With this in mind, we asked some Greeks what they say to those who believe the best olive oil comes from Italy or Spain.

Last November, a Spaniard who has traveled the world to photograph olive groves visited Greece. Having seen Corfu and Paxos before, Eduardo Mencos Valdes decided to explore Crete, because he believes it “is the origin, in many ways, of our culture. You can trace the cultivation and the importance of olives and olive oil back to the Minoan culture” of Crete.

Results of a recent scientific study of mice at the University of Louisiana at Monroe suggest oleocanthal rich extra virgin olive oil deserves to be designated a "medical food." Researchers led by Dr. Amal Kaddoumi demonstrated for the first time that this type of olive oil can treat symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in mice when used in their daily diet.

There are hundreds of varieties of olive trees, some used mainly for table olives and others generally dedicated to olive oil. Olive oil types are defined differently in North America and Europe, but extra virgin is widely considered the best. Olive oils differ in taste, quality, and health benefits based on a number of variables:

Archaeologist Anaya Sarpaki explains in On the Olive Routes that olive trees have existed longer than modern humans. For example, wild olive leaf fossils from the Greek island of Evia date back 23 million years. At Santorini, 37,000 to 50,000 year old leaf fossils from the olive species Olea europaea have been discovered in the volcanic crater.

When I first came to Crete, the seasons surprised me. Rather than being adorned with red, orange, and yellow deciduous trees, fall turned the green of a Pennsylvania spring, and winter filled with more blossoms than a Rocky Mountain summer. Autumn rains revived leaves and grasses, and when skies cleared, the winter sun welcomed ever so many wildflowers.

The amazing price of 510 euros for a half liter of Greek olive oil captured plenty of attention, but the full story has deeper roots in ancient Greek olive trees. Some of these ancient trees are being preserved and promoted by the Eptastiktos cooperative that donated that precious oil to a Dutch charity auction, and also helps its Cretan community.